Don't you have any flour left? Can't you just weigh it?

The 120g/cup thing is a baker's standard. It's not what the person who wrote the recipe necessarily thought, and so much depends on humidity, texture (grind), airiness (how fluffy and sifted-like it is), etc., that it really can't be. I would have tried it using measuring cups the first time, just as a get to know you. :)

No knead dough is supposed to be pretty wet. By the time you divide it, it shouldn't be a splat all over the place, but should kind of sit up in a ball. It does help the shaped rise, however, if you reign in the sides a bit so it can't overspread.

Re flouring: The recipe said to flour the board lightly (i.e., brushed around. Heavy is where there's an eighth inch depth to the flour), to sprinkle the folded dough with flour, and to flour your hands in a few places, so it does expect you to add a few tablespoons of flour.

There's another clue in the instructions: " scoop the dough from the counter. It’s ok if it sticks; a bench scraper can help transfer the dough". That means they expect it to be wet and squodgy.

I posted about this in the Sourdough thread, though it's actually a commercial yeast no-knead. I've made it twice, once with some other whole grains, and it's a good recipe: 100% Whole Wheat No Knead Bread

Thanks, plllog. Right now the dough is rising on a parchment sheet on the counter (easier to lower it into the hot dutch oven parchment and all). As soon as the pound cake (your method) is out of the oven, I'll heat the dutch oven and put the bread in and cross my fingers. I did work a bit of flour into the bread dough but I doubt it was a tablespoon. I can still hear my mother trying to teach me to make yeast rolls and fussing at me that I was working too much flour into the dough while it was kneading it. It left me skittish.

Well, good luck with them all!

The trick to bread is to bake regularly. You get a feel for it.

Regarding the bench flour, one way not to get skittish is to measure it! For instance, Make flat measures by the tablespoon of what you put on your board and hands and try to measure what's left at the end. In general, a couple of tablespoons either way, once you have an established rise, is no big deal. Most of the breads I know from before my whole home-milled/wild-yeast adventure this year call for a volume range for flour, rather than an exactitude like for cake. Like three loaves is 7-9 cups of flour. One cup of that is for the board, your hands, etc., and only about half makes its way into the dough. Another half to whole cup is for adjusting the wetness of the dough.

A trick with machine kneaded dough is to sprinkle just a pinch of flour at the end of the mixing stage, right by the edge of the bowl. If the dough pulls away in layers and fissures, it has enough flour. You can feel the same thing with your fingers as you're kneading by hand. That it's not sucking in a sprinkle of flour.

plllog, your knowledge is nearly encyclopedic! I would like to bake bread regularly, but DH doesn't like homemade bread. I like home baked bread because it has more flavor, is much less expensive, and lacks unpronounceable ingredients. I will continue to bake from time to time and freeze the additional loaves, but DH will only eat homemade bread if the roads are iced over and he can't get to the grocery.

My No Knead Whole Wheat bread is out of the oven. It is flat and pitiful looking. It took great effort to get the Thermapen through the crust. It is cooling, but things are not looking good.

Well, this is probably too late until next time: I haven't made no knead bread with much whole wheat, and not any for a couple years; but it already sounds like everything is already just about right. Plllog has a great tech term there. Squodgy sounds just about right. You are looking for some height, but you could move it with a dough scraper and something else like your hand or another scraper if you had one. And yes, the parchment is much easier. However, generally speaking, even flour corrections would usually be in larger units than tablespoon, so you can be more careless next time.

The main area not covered so far is preheating the baking container. I know the oven is hot, but the pot needs to be completely preheated as well.

Thanks, Chas. The dutch oven was thoroughly preheated. I think I'm just going to give up no-knead breads. The basic white sandwich bread I make is kneaded with the dough hook on my mixer and it isn't hard at all.

Actually, the no kneads are designed to have fairly hard crusts so in that respect you may not be far off. I have not had the rising success that ann_t has often shown, but otherwise, mine have had the crusty with big holes, french bread thing going for them.

Sorry, I cross posted with you and didn't know you were not only started, but finished. I know there is a way to update the thread (to check for new posts), but I don't recall what it is.

Make beer cheese bread. It's foolproof and so delicious.

Don't give up bbstx. I was also getting exasperated, making a couple loaves of the no-knead bread every week, in an attempt to get that perfect artisan loaf. I've only attempted the white flour version so far. My first attempts were crusty & flavorful, but quite flattened, and lacked that nice large, open, crater like texture. I figured the biggest problem was that my dutch oven was too big/wide, so the very wet dough was able to spread out when placed inside. Also, transferring the dough from bowl to dutch oven, no matter how careful, was causing it to deflate a bit and creating a denser loaf.

Here's what works for me...

Approximately 2-3 hours before placing the dough in the oven:

Line a bowI with a large sheet of parchment paper. Yes, it will wrinkle and you'll need to pleat the paper a bit to fit. I use a bowl that approximates the finished loaf shape & size; this helps to keep it from flattening.

Gently nudge the dough out of the rising bowl onto a pretty heavily floured counter, then reach under the edges of the dough and pull/fold/pinch them to the top (kinda like making buns) which forms a nice round ball. Then reach under the bottom of the formed loaf (bottom surface is now well floured so it doesn't stick, but no extra flour is actually worked into the dough...) and *quickly* turn it over into the prepared/lined bowl, so the floured bottom now becomes the top. Cover and let rise for the next 2-3 hrs.

Just before placing in pre-heated dutch oven, I (carefully) cut a small slash or X on the top.

Then, carefully grasping the edges of the parchment paper, pick up the dough and transfer it (paper and all) to the dutch oven and bake 30 minutes with lid on. Then quickly remove the loaf from the dutch oven, peel paper off and place back in oven right on the rack and finish baking for another 16 - 18 minutes.

HTH,

Dawn

It's been a very tasty learning experience :)

My no-knead bread also doesn't rise very high, and I've had both successes and failures when baking it in a dutch oven. I made some breadsticks with the last of my dough in the refrigerator and they were hard as rocks, even the dog wouldn't eat them, and I've baked a LOT of bread and it's usually edible. So, into the food processor, where they became bread crumbs.

I never weigh anything, just thinking about it makes my eyes glaze over and I revert to peanut butter on a spoon instead of cooking supper, but even when measuring, bread is not the same two times in a row. It depends on the flour, the humidity, your kitchen, the wheat the flour was made from, the yeast, the temperature, so many things that you really can't just weigh the flour and expect consistent results. As mentioned, you have to make bread until you know how your dough should look and feel.

The no-knead doughs are generally pretty wet, so you may have had it right the first time anyway.

Annie

Hi - best bread baking book IMO is Beard on Bread by James Beard. It really goes into detail about appropriate texture for dough & finished loaves, tips & techniques, etc. plus a lot of very good recipes - not only for yeast-raised, but biscuits & quick breads as well. My old, stained paperback copy is over 30 years old & I still use it. I bake a loaf of yeast bread every week & I have a basic recipe I 'made up' myself. I credit my expertise to that book...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/545911.Beard_on_Bread

I do not have the Beard on Bread book, and so I ordered it from Amazon (hardcover) for $4.00, including shipping - it was 1¢ without shipping, and so I thought I might as well buy it. I've been using Baking With Julia, but that has only a few bread recipes, and my other bread books are for bread machines, and I no longer have one.

plllog, that's a great idea to roll up tea towels around the loaf, to keep it from spreading. I bet that would be easier than trying to lift a jiggly round of wet dough out of a bowl then into a scorching pot - thanks!

Beautiful pic of your boule of bread, btw :)

Dawn

After my bread cooled, I sliced it. The crust was quite, uh, crusty. Not exactly tough but certainly sturdy. I had to put some muscle into slicing it. The bottom crust was almost not cut-able. Nevertheless, the interior had a fairly open crumb, not tender but not dense or tough. I won't make it again soon, but it was an interesting exercise.

Glad it came out. I get it about the unenthusiastic husband, but the more you make it, the better it'll be. :)

Dawn, I was impressed myself. I'd done it that way for long loaves, but this was the first time for a round (wouldn't have thought of it if not for saying in the recipe). The second loaf was even better.

How long did it rise in the oven? 87F is pretty warm. I like long slow rises but my kitchen is chilly.

It rose for a total of 14 hours. The first 8 or so were in the laundry room; the last 6 or so were in the oven. I checked the temp in the oven before putting the dough in. The oven temp when I put it in was 77 degrees.

BTW, if you want to deharden the crust, put the loaf in a zipper bag. :)

lol, zipper bag, never! The tougher and crustier, the better. And omg it makes great toast! :)

I discovered tonight that the bread crust had softened somewhat in the zipper bag. It made a good, but small tuna sandwich!

Dawn, crusty and tough would be fine with me, if I were ripping off hunks of it (then slathering butter on it), but for my purposes this time, I need to be able to slice the bread.

Ahhh - you need a good knife. And I never slather butter. I always dip in a good artisan olive oil (for myself) .... My (very) fussy and old fashioned dh now loves his "unique" sandwiches made w/ this bread :)

I love a good crunchy crust, and wrap my bread in a cotton birdseye tea towel, but I've had crusts that were too thick and dry, and the zipper big is a great solution. It retains the moisture that's evaporating from the crumb. I agree that you have to be able to make a biteable sandwich. BTW, if it's really flat, consider cutting off a hunk and splitting it bagelwise for sandwiches. :)

I haven't tried, but I've been tempted by this no-knead bread recipe from the NYT. Then they published this version which is faster to rise as they added more yeast. Only thing is, I'm trying to cut the carbs so the last thing I need in the house is home-made bread. Yikes!

To slice a crusty bread, lay the loaf on its side and cut with a good serrated knife. This will prevent "squishing of the bread," and will give you a clean slice.


I sometimes bake NKB, and love it for dipping in olive oil. But for sandwiches, the menfolk and I still prefer a fine crumb, home-style bread, like my soft, squishy honey bread.

Sol

After my bread has cooled I always put it in a plastic bag and slice it the next morning. It's the perfect consistency for slicing, then I freeze. We just snap off the required slices as we need them.

Annie,

The first time I made a No-Knead Bread I used this recipe: Almost No-Knead Bread. I found it easier than the one I just made. Since it was developed by Cook's Illustrated, it, of course, has more steps and more ingredients, but overall, I thought the instructions were easier to follow.

Thanks bbstx...that sounds tangy with the beer and vinegar.

I agree that the Almost No Knead Bread recipe is quite easy. I had great success with it the first time I made it, but have to say I didn't taste the beer and vinegar very much at all. Can't post a pic until I get home.

The last month I have been babying a beer sourdough starter and finally made bread this past weekend. What a failure! My very first bread "door-stop" in my entire 30+ years of making bread! So....that starter is going to get tossed!

trouz, look at thisthread on sourdough bread that I started. DD was starting to make sourdough bread and had some failures. Some of the wonderful bread bakers here gave me excellent advice to pass on to DD, who is now making pretty good sourdough bread on a regular basis.

No-knead bread is the best thing, since, well..... sliced bread! For bread and pizza dough I'm a convert.